Tag Archives: Church of England

George Bell was Bishop of Chichester from 1929 to 1958. I first came across him when working on Churchill, who clearly found the good bishop a great trial. On one level this might seem odd, since Bell was one of the earliest opponents of Nazism, and at a time when public policy in the UK was one of trying to find accommodation with Hitler, Bell’s view was that his system was so evil that that would be impossible. He worked closely with ‘confessing churches’ in Germany which refused to join the official Reichkirche, and he worked tirelessly to help Jewish refugees, especially those who were Christian converts who were often not helped by anyone else. Bell also supported those in Germany who wanted to overthrow Hitler, and the last letter the great Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote was to Bell. One might, therefore, have imagine that the great anti-appeaser, Churchill, would have admired Bell, and perhaps even have recommended him for the See of Canterbury upon William Temple’s sudden death in 1944; he didn’t and he didn’t. Why?

T.S. Eliot described Bell as a man of ‘dauntless integrity’ – and that was his undoing in Churchill’s eyes. Bell detested Nazism with every fibre of his being, but he did not think barbarism should be fought with barbarism. He was an early, consistent and vocal opponent of area bombing – which brought him public opprobrium and the hostility of Churchill – and lost him the chance of Canterbury.

Reputation is fleeting, and even by the time I was writing in the 1980s, Bell’s name was not one to conjure with. It was good, then, to hear that a biography of him was in the press, not least because its author, Dr Andrew Chandler, Director of the George Bell Institute at Chichester, was a friend and colleague whose work I have long admired. What neither of us could have known was that a few months before publication date the diocese of Chichester would issue a statement saying that it accepted allegations that Bell had committed paedophile activities with a young girl, and it had paid a sum of money to the complainant. Suddenly Bell’s reputation was in ruins.

The odd thing was that the official inquiry had not looked at any of Bell’s voluminous papers, nor had it questioned his domestic chaplain (now 94) who had spent a great deal of time with Bell at the time of the alleged abuse. Now it might be that there would be no evidence coming from any of these sources, but they should have been consulted. Could it be possible that, in the post-Savile atmosphere, the Diocese had simply wanted to clear up the case and move on? Was it really possible that one of Bell’s successors had, effectively thrown him under the proverbial bus? That, according to a report commissioned by a group set up to defend Bell, was precisely what had happened – or at least it looked like it. The Diocese was asking us to believe its processes, but providing no detail about them. If they had not involved any work on his papers or talking with surviving witnesses, it was hard to put any faith in them.

One of the lessons from the Savile story is that we must take seriously allegations of abuse; one of the lessons which comes, as Cranmer points out today, from the way the police have handled some of the allegations, is that when they say they are ‘credible’ that does not mean they are true. It is easy enough, in the post-Savile era, to accept allegations and thus avoid the allegation one is putting more pressure on the complainant by subjecting their story to forensic examination; but that is how the justice system works. Because the Diocese has not seen fit to reveal its enquiry, we either have to take it on trust or question its results; it may be there are those still prepared to take an internal enquiry on this matter on trust – but not many any more.

Charles Moore and Peter Hitchens have written eloquently about the case, and the Bell Group is determined that there should be a proper inquiry. At the moment we have, as Peter Hitches has said, an absurd situation where Archbishop Justin can tell the BBC that ‘George Bell – a man he believes to be a filthy child molester who dishonestly and selfishly abused a little girl – is also ‘the greatest hero that most of us have’. I’ve heard of a broad church, but this is ridiculous. One or the other. Not both.’ Quite.

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The good news appears to be that were I to become ordained in the Church of England, I could, perhaps, officiate in my bikini – had I such an article of clothing (I don’t – sorry to disappoint Neo 🙂 ). At the moment what can be worn is strictly controlled by canon law and liturgical rubrics. Currently, a surplice or alb with scarf or stole must be worn at holy communion, morning and evening prayer on Sundays and at weddings, funerals and baptisms. In many churches it has become the fashion to ignore this, but instead of telling vicars to smarten up, the Church Synod is going to discuss relaxing it altogether. This seems a little counter-intuitive to me. Ministers have worn vestments for the longest time because it marks out what they do as sacred, different from what happens in the everyday sphere. Even the mere act of vesting before a service is a sign that something special is about to happen, and I know of instances where someone in their clericals has been approached and asked for a prayer by a perfect stranger.

My own Anglican tradition is hardly likely to be taking advantage of any lightening up of the dress code, and I do hope that whatever happens, bikinis will remain far away – but in an era where we have had clown masses in Roman Catholic Churches, who can tell?

It is a sign of a lack of reverence. I cannot help myself. When I go into Church I dress as though I am going out to an important event – as I am. So I put on my best clothes and make sure that I am ready to meet Jesus. When I get into Church I hate anyone chattering – there’s time for that at coffee after Mass. I need time to prepare myself, so I arrive about half an hour before Mass starts. How those who arrive at the last minute can be ready for what is to come I can’t imagine. Is this my form of Pharisaism? No, it is simply a matter of respect. When I go to receive communion I kneel at the altar rail and receive on the tongue because the only hands that should handle the blessed sacrament are those of the priest. Afterwards, I pray in silence. Recently someone has adopted the fashion of having a hymn during communion – I wish they wouldn’t, but I can tune out.

In short, for me, as for many, this is the highlight of the week. My priest is properly vested according to the rubrics, that is his sign of respect for the order the Church insists upon, The Church does so not because it is pharisaical, but because it wishes to mark off the sacred from the profane. In front of the reserved sacrament, I kneel, how could I not in the Lord’s presence?

It may be that our irreverent age cannot understand these things, but then, so much the worse for the age. As I say, and alas for it, any change won’t change what happens in many places now, it will just excuse it. It won’t change what we do where I worship, or, I guess, in many places, but it is a sad sign of sad times.

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If we let it, our faith can do more for us than we suppose. One of the great joys of my life at the moment is being able to pray the Compline service before I go to sleep. I find the words of the general confession such a comfort, as they express what I could never express so well myself, and they lead me through, after the absolution, to the Psalms, which I always approach like one scrubbed fresh clean – with the sins of the day absolved and the words of the Psalmist pulling me into line with the countless numbers of people who have found in them comfort and healing. Psalm 31:-16 (in our numbering) allows me to cast myself onto the infinite and tender mercy of God. The words of Hebrews 13:20-21 further help my soul to go to that calm place whence a quiet and peaceful night might be found. The Nunc Dimittis takes me further down that road, and then we come to my favourite Collect:

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord/and by thy great mercy defend us/from all perils and dangers of this night/ for the love of they only Son, Our Saviour Jesus Christ

Could anything make a more perfect ending to the day? As the last notes die away, we fold our prayer books in perfect silence and we make our way back to our rooms where, if we wish, we can continue our conversation with God. Me? I simply hold on to the silence and the peace and know that in there, God is with me and I am with him.

I mentioned this recently to a friend, who said she’d never been to such a service, so I invited her to ours, and she loves it too – even if it is slightly spoiled for her by the need to drive home. It reminded me of what richness we have inherited, and how profligate we have been with it. In a world where some struggle to sleep and find peace,, our forefathers left us this perfect preparation for rest – and we have all but abandoned it. we are a strange species to be sure.

I am often put in mind of some lines from George Herbert about how our attitude to death is transformed by the knowledge that Christ died so we should have eternal life

Therefore we can go die as sleep, and trust

Half that we have

Unto an honest faithful grave;

Making our pillows either down, or dust.

‘Down or dust’, that is our choice, will we rise with him, or go down into that dust where we cannot praise him?

Now, all I need is to be able to get to Matins on time, and I will be able to see what effect that has on my day – and all of this is so little time too.

This blog usually marks this day, the anniversary of the judicial murder of King Charles I, and Chalcedon has written on this for us here. The Book of Common Prayer once recognised this in its liturgical calendar, and as I remain an Anglican, it seems fitting to mark this day with some reflections about this commemoration, which, to many, may seem odd. Charles I was, after all, not a very successful King, and his reign ended in civil war, and with his own execution. All of that is true but beside the point, and the fact that our society does not get the point says more about it than it should feel comfortable with.

Charles I died for a principle. Had he been willing to renounce episcopacy and the Established Church, he would not have been put on trial and would have been allowed to live; this he would not do, and he died for his faith – that is what makes him a martyr. At his coronation he swore an oath to defend the Catholic Church, and that is what he did, even though it cost him his life. At the Restoration the Church he had died for recognised his sacrifice, proclaimed him a martyr and added his name to its liturgical calendar. It would be nice if one could say that the Church remained grateful to him, but that is not the way of fallen mankind, and by the early nineteenth century his cult had been all but abandoned. It was the men of the Oxford Movement who restored it. John Keble, the priest and poet, wrote movingly of the

True son of our dear Mother, early taughtWith her to worship and for her to die,Nursed in her aisles to more than kingly thought,Oft in her solemn hours we dream thee nigh.

It was apt that it should have been the Oxford men who defended Charles the Martyr as their fire was aimed at the way in which a non-Anglican parliament was the only source of legislation for the Church and sought to pronounce even on matters of doctrine. It was, it is said, a parliamentary draughtsman who removed the commemoration of the King from the calendar in 1859, but for loyal sons and daughters of the Church, he remains there – long before there was any procedure to pronounce someone a saint, it was the love and the memory of the people which did the job. As Andrew Lacey shows in a very fine book on the King, relics were gathered and miracles attributed to their healing power.

If you came this way, Taking the route you would be likely to take From the place you would be likely to come from, If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness. It would be the same at the end of the journey, If you came at night like a broken king, If you came by day not knowing what you came for, It would be the same, when you leave the rough road And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade And the tombstone.

Nicholas Ferrer, Herbert’s literary legatee, founded a religious community at Little Gidding, in Huntingdonshire (about ten miles north-west of Cambridge), and it was thence that Charles I resorted after his defeat at Nasbey, arriving there on the night of 1 Mary 1647. The Cromwellians destroyed the community later that year in one of their many acts of vandalism, but after the Restoration, a church was once again established, and an armorial window installed in the King’s honour:

Charles was a man of deep personal piety, and it is the manner of his death which made him a martyr. As Marvell wrote of the execution: “He nothing common did or mean / Upon that memorable scene”.

To an age where every political problem can be fudged, and where the only question appears to be how much someone wants to surrender a ‘deeply-held’ principle, Charles I’s act must seem quixotic, but to anyone familiar with Christian history, it is recognisable. Charles died a martyr to his Church – and it is high time, and beyond, that the Church restored this commemoration to its liturgical calendar. I asked Chalcedon whether the Ordinariate celebrated the day, but he tells me not. I suppose that if the Church for which he died won’t, it is too much to expect anyone else to. I am sure that members of the Society of King Charles the Martyr will be commemorating him, and in my own little community we remembered him at Matins and will at Compline tonight. Of your mercy, pray for the soul of the martyred King.

This has been a week when most of the news in Christianity has been by the Anglican Communion. Jess has ably (as always) defended her church, and its very unwieldy mandate as the Church of England. In a very diverse country, such as England, that’s a recipe for a continuous uproar, made worse by parts of the communion being apt, in her memorable term, “to throw their toys from the pram”.

I’m always sympathetic because I was brought up in the American form of the Evangelical State Church of Prussia that hot mess that Kaiser Frederick William III of Prussia made when he force brigaded the Lutheran and Reformed churches together after the Napoleonic Wars. It too had the uneasy mission of both serving God, and being all thing to all (Protestant) people. It actually fared much the same with the same forces tearing it apart, until the second world war pretty much killed it. Remember much of Prussia is now Poland. In Germany it is now part of the Union of Evangelical Churches, and in America part of the steeply declining United Church of Christ, an even worse product of the go-go sixties.

But the CofE soldiers on, and the baton is increasingly passing to the much more orthodox African-led GAFCON, which includes the breakaway Anglican Church in North America, which is small but growing.

But this is about Jess’ continued and continuing defense of her church, which puts her amongst probably the majority of her sensible and tolerant co-religionists. She started early as this post from 2012 shows

The Church of England seems to attract few defenders. Some from the Catholic wing have crossed the Tiber to the Ordinariate; others on the liberal wing seem indistinguishable from secular liberals; and there is always the Archbishop of Canterbury to criticise when all other news fails. Sometimes it seems as though ‘the centre cannot hold’; and yet it does.

The Church of England is a compromise. It is not the hard-line Protestantism of Edward VI, neither is it the return to Catholicism of Mary I. To those who like firm lines of definition, this looks like a fault; to those of us who wish for a degree of comprehensiveness, it is a virtue. It reminds me of the definition of Christ’s two natures agreed at Chalcedon. The ancestors of the Copts found it too Nestorian, whilst the Nestorians found it made insufficient concessions to their position. Any such comparison should not be pressed too hard; but the point is that any widely accepted set of formulae will have within them things which those who want sharp definitions won’t like – and that in dealing with the Infinite Mystery of the Economy of our salvation, we should beware of thinking that granularity is necessarily to be had.

Newman may have abandoned his idea of the C of E as the via media, but that does not mean he was wrong to have formulated it. Much as I admire the Roman Catholic Church, there is something in it unduly attached to legalisms and definitions, or at least that is my impression. From experience, at least at secondhand, its approach to divorced people taking communion seems to fall into that category. Annulments are a long and complex process, and whilst clearly designed to help deal with the tension between what Our Lord said and pastoral needs, they seem at once cumbersome and lacking in appreciation of the needs of the repentant sinner; the C of E’s approach recognises the latter and lacks the former.

Of course to those convinced that the Catholic Church is the Church founded by Christ, these things are, rightly, secondary, but to those of us still of the view that the C of E is the branch of Catholicism practised in these islands, they give cause for hesitation.

My Orthodox acquaintances push their argument about legalism far too far in my view, almost to the point of it becoming their version of anti-Catholicism. There is much wisdom to be gained from studying the Orthodox tradition, as there is from really knowing the Catholic one. For me, one of the virtues of where I am is that I do not have to choose between them, or reject men like Wesley, who I also regard with veneration. A typical muddled Anglican? Perhaps, but a position shared by many. That does not make it right to those for whom it seems like persistence in error; but it allows me to persist in my journey, and the Anglican Church which formed me, offers me a way of love which seeks to comprehend all who will take it.

I found Jessica’s post on the Anglican conference to be very fair, and to make the salient points.

I also thought Francis encapsulated my views exceptionally well when she said this:

One should always apologise if one’s behaviour towards others is uncharitable. But this is different from, pointing out, in truth as well as love, that we all sin (including in the sexual sphere) and that this sin separates us from God. What is problematic today is that you can’t state this in public without being called “homophobic”. One might coin the word “Christophobic” to describe people who can’t bear the toughness of the Christian faith and hate those who try to live it. We are all called to sexual restraint outside marriage between a man and a woman. This can be very hard – but part of being a Christian is “carrying one’s cross”. Today, the “Cross” is a scandal to our hedonistic society that refuses to allow any restraint on any kind of sexual behaviour. Sadly this has infected the Anglican Church in the West – but not in Africa where the bulk of Anglicans live.

Very true, and very well stated.

But as I read through the comments, something else struck me. Our churches have come very close to condoning all of the sexual sins, homosexuality, yes; but also adultery, fornication, and occasionally lately paedophilia as well. And always abortion. But there is more than sex concerned here.

All of these sins (and most are either, or lately were, crimes, as well) have one thing in common. Like strongarm robbery, they are crimes of the strong against the weak. To Francis’ point on the differences between Christianity, one needs to look no further than last New Years Eve in Germany, for the difference between Christianity and Islam, and how our secular governments cower before Islam. And that is something we are increasingly seeing as the tide of Christianity rolls back in the west. The protection for the weakest amongst us is leaving with it.

That shouldn’t surprise anybody, really. The protection of the individual (and the organic family) is a key feature of Christianity, based on Judaism. All other systems have elevated the ‘collective’ over the individual. Only in Christian Western Europe and places it has reached in the world, like North America, has the individual been exalted over the group. Remember, in Christianity, many may believe but we are judged, and saved, individually.

This is the centerpiece of our faith, He came down from heaven to save us, each of us, an individual sinner, not the nation, or the tribe, or the congregation, but me. The protection of the weak against the strong, and we can tie that back into our secular history just as easily. What else is King Arthur, the Once and Future King, but the end of the rule of ‘Might is Right’. And that is the entire thrust of Anglo-American legal history as well. The protection of the individual citizen against the all powerful, and uncaring state, whether King, Parliament, President, or Congress, the objective law is the weak individual’s bulwark against the state. All the way from King Alfred the Great, through Magna Charta, and the Cousin’s Wars to the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution, and beyond.

And that is what I see in where many of our churches are going, and undoing, not only of the Faith, as it has always been taught, everywhere, but and undoing of the very rights that we believe God himself gave to us, in favor of bullies and slavemasters.

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One characteristic of the Church of England is that, rather like the English (being half-Welsh and half-German I can say these things) it is quite self-deprecating. It is used to being accused of being ‘wishy-washy’ and of just about anything else people can think of. Like all churches in the Western world, it has seen its numbers decline, and, being the National Church, it has come in for a deal of criticism as to its contribution to this sad state of affairs. What you don’t see it doing is to boast about itself – that would be very un-English. Being very un-English (in my ancestry anyway) I want to speak up for it.

My Church believes that Scripture, Reason and Tradition should be used in tandem when trying to understand what we are meant to do as Christians. In doctrinal terms it continues to do what it has always done, which is to strike a balance between the severity of Calvinism and the legalism one sometimes finds in other Churches. Although not used as often as it was, our Prayer Book (a masterpiece of English writing) and its XXXIX Articles, and its liturgy and Creed are enormously helpful in giving a sense of continuity. The Church provides enough forms of service to suit all tastes, but they remain within a liturgical framework, and allow any minister who wants, to avoid both the excesses of personal taste by the parson and the congregation. As ever, it tries to strike a happy medium; as so often, the medium seems less happy when struck!

In that search for balance, it is very open about the wide spectrum of liturgical and theological preferences. There are, as ever, those who insist that the end of the liturgical spectrum they prefer should be the one which predominates. As an Anglo-Catholic, I prefer a liturgy which is far closer to the Extraordinary Form in Roman Catholicism than it is to the Novus Ordo Mass – indeed, whenever I go to one of the latter, I am amazed at how Protestant it is in tone and style. I kneel at the altar rail to receive the Lord on my tongue, I do not join a queue to have him thrust into my hand. At the other end, there are those who want something which would make even a ‘Clown Mass’ look seemly. The good news is that we can all find somewhere that suits us – and being English, can feel smugly superior to that lot over there who don’t do as we do; we can also then apologise at confession.

The Church of England has also been the home to some marvellous creative minds. In terms of poetry, George Herbert, Charles Wesley (whose hymns are simply glorious), John Keble, and John Henry Newman (most of whose poetry was written whilst he was an Anglican), Tennyson, T.S. Eliot and R.S. Thomas are all products of our tradition. When it comes to music, Anglican Choral Evensong is one of the glories of Christianity – it you aren’t familiar with it, try this.

So quiet are we about what is good about our system, is we forget how amazing our ecclesiastical system can be. The curacy system is a marvellous training method, a bit like an apprenticeship, which gives the ordinand time to adapt him or herself to the demands parish life puts on a priest. The parish system means that we are here whenever someone wants us. We are the only Church with a commitment to provide pastoral care in every parish – even if it means, as it often does now, that we have to cover five or six or seven churches. If someone wants access to a clergyman and is unchurched, it tends to be to us they come – simply because we are there. For all the good-humoured banter directed at our bishops, men of the calibre of NT Wright or Rowan Williams, make a permanent contribution to Christian theology outside our own church. They do a grand job, usually unsung, and they act as fathers, and now mothers, in the faith to all. Equally important is our tradition of education. Our parish schools provide a great place for children to learn the basics of the faith, whilst our Training Colleges, provide aspirants to the Ministry with an excellent and rigorous training. It is no accident that there have been and continue to be so many good Anglican theologians.

We retain a willingness to discuss difficult issues in public rather than in coded ecclesiastical-speak, which can give the impression we are permanently arguing; but we think that better than trying to claim everyone is on the same page really when they aren’t. We’ve managed to work our way through difficult theological issues such as women in the ministry, and if it has taken us 25 years to get most people on the same page, and if we have lost some wonderful people in the process, we have done it.

We also, of course, have a wonderful Supreme Governor, Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, not one of whose pronouncements has ever had to be explained away by a spin doctor. During her reign she has seen seven Popes reign, and met most of them. Her Coronation Oath bound her in God’s name to serve her people faithfully – something she has done since 1952 and continues to do in her ninetieth year, with a schedule of engagements which would daunt someone twenty years younger. She lives her faith, and has set an example of faithful service which inspires many of us.

I could go on, but shan’t, this is already un-Anglican enough. Yes, I know there is a pile of stuff on the other side of the scale, as there is with every Church, but I just wanted to sing a small paean of praise to my Church. I’ll stop now 😳 (quietly walks away …).

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For most people in England, ‘the Church’ is the Church of England. It is still the only church which covers most of the country, and in many villages, to this day, it is at the centre of village life in so far as events such as the summer fete are concerned. So, by the time this goes up, I shall be making enemies for life by judging the cake-making contest (we have, in a very Anglican compromise, managed to contrive a situation in which there are many types of winner), whilst my fiance will be grilling the burgers and barbecuing all types of meat (what is this man and meat and fire thing? Clearly very primeval). The Church fete, as it is known by all and sundry, goes back to a time when the church really was the central point of village life: it was where people were married, babies baptised and people buried, and usually where the village school was situated. The State has taken on many of these things, and in some ways, and in some places, the church is really almost a survival of a bygone era. As the State has taken on all the roles just mentioned (and increased taxes to pay for same), it has pushed the church out of the way; whether, in this age of greater austerity and cuts in public services, it will be able to continue to do so, is an interesting subject for conjecture.

Already, with the advent of foodbanks, we have seen the Church make a come-back. The State is quite unable to manage to provide emergency aid for people whom its bureaucratic procedures cannot deal with swiftly enough to ensure that they have enough to eat between becoming unemployed and receiving benefits. The vast clientage who have lived on State benefits forever know how to use the system, those newly unemployed don’t, and it is so complex and slow that people can risk going hungry. So here, as in so many other places, the churches have worked together to provide foodbanks, where individuals can come and get help; here we also provide links to other sources of advice. None of this requires anyone to go near a church for religious purposes, but it reminds us all of what St James says, which is that true religion is feeding the widows and the orphans. Goodness knows, if you look around you, there is more than enough of that to be done, and as I said to my fiance the other evening, it is all very well arguing abstruse points of theology, but we do risk missing this central message of Jesus – which is that when you feed the hunger and clothe the naked, you are doing these things to Him, as well as for Him.

The early Christians were famous for the way they took care of each other; in a society which preached and practised devil take the hindmost, Christians stood out for their care for those on the margins of society. As the tide of State influence recedes – and I do not see it coming back – the churches are being offered a chance to practice what they preach. The more of that we do, the more people will wonder what it is which makes this group of people act in a way which others won’t. That is our best witness, and I hope we shall seize it. Now, for those cakes …

In chapter three of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the historian, Edward Gibbon wrote that the peaceful and golden reign of Antoninus offered few materials for ‘history, which is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind’. It was on this day in 1649 that one of the more egregious crimes and follies committed by an English government took place: Charles I was beheaded before a crowd in Whitehall; the first, and last time, in English history that an anointed king was executed in public. In a foretaste of what would happen often in the future, the king was put on ‘trial’ by those who had won a war, found ‘guilty’ on charges no proper court would have recognised, and duly subjected to victors’ ‘justice’: the French and Russian revolutionaries would follow suite.

When the Monarchy was happily restored in 1660, the Convocation of Canterbury and York agreed to add the King’s name to the calendar of Saints when the Prayer Book was revised; this, I think, makes him the last saint recognised by the Church of England alone. From 1662 onwards, on this day the Martyr King has been commemorated by the Church he did so much to serve; when I was a young man it was still the fashion to say a Mass for the King; I hope it is so still in some quarters.

No doubt Macaulay was correct in judging Charles a king much addicted to ‘dark and crooked ways’, but then the old Whig had little time for the kind of King and Church Toryism which celebrated the King as a martyr. Like most of the Stuarts, Charles lacked a sense of what was possible in politics, but when it came to the Church, he knew what he was doing, and for those who reverence the Catholic tradition in Anglicanism, he is indeed a martyr.

Charles deplored the growing Calvinist influence on the State Church, and was sympathetic to the aims of Archbishop William Laud who wished to restore the Church a more catholic sacramental and liturgical style of worship and ethos. Under Laud, and with the King’s patronage and encouragement, theEucharist was once again seen as the principal action of the Church, with the sermon being relegated to its proper place. More controversially, the doctrine of the Real Presence was once more taught at Oxford and Cambridge, and vestments were worn again. Candles were lit upon altars and a greater emphasis was placed on the externals of worship including the use of music. Altars, which had been destroyed under Edward VI and Elizabeth, were were restored in churches, replacing the communion tables which had taken their place during the great iconoclasm. In all of this, Charles was instrumental in restoring to the Anglican church its Catholic heritage, and men like Lancelot Andrewes and Jessica’s beloved George Herbert flourished under his patronage.

Readers here, treated to the lucubrations of Bosco, will easily understand the fury raised in Caliban’s breast by such patent and potent signs of reverence for Christ’s Church, and not the least of the factors which led to the Civil War was the rage of Calvinists as they saw their preaching houses turned back into places of prayer and meditation; noise is always threatened by the silence of prayer. Laud was duly impeached and executed, and Charles was offered the chance of retaining his life and throne if he renounced episcopacy and accepted the Puritan way; this he refused to do. It is this refusal which made the restored Church recognise him as a martyr.

Charles was, in many ways, a foolish monarch who played a poor hand badly, but those in the Church of England, and the Ordinariate, who have preserved the Catholic tradition in this land (and, I sometimes think, a better version of it than that reintroduced by Wiseman), owe him a great debt. Whatever his shortcomings, on the issue of supreme importance, he was willing to die for what he thought was right; to suffer and to die rather than compromise his faith. We do not ask of Saints and Martyrs that they live perfect lives, but we do look to the manner of his death, and here the poet Marvell had it right:

He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene;
But with his keener eye
The axe’s edge did try:
Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite
To vindicate his helpless right;
But bowed his comely head
Down, as upon a bed.

John Keble’s poem also deserves a mention here. Its full text can be found on the website of the Society of King Charles the Maryer, but here I will quote just these verses:

True son of our dear Mother, early taught
With her to worship and for her to die,
Nurs’d in her aisles to more than kingly thought,
Oft in her solemn hours we dream thee nigh.

For thou didst love to trace her daily lore,
And where we look for comfort or for calm,
Over the self-same lines to bend, and pour
Thy heart with hers in some victorious psalm.

And well did she thy loyal love repay:
When all foresook, her Angel still was nigh,
Chain’d and bereft, and on thy funeral way,
Straight to the Cross she turn’d thy dying eye.

"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." J.R.R. Tolkien <br>“I come not from Heaven, but from Essex.” William Morris